hello i am soniclovenoize. because i have too much time on my hands, i waste it by reconstructing famous unreleased albums. here are some of them. enjoy.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Bob Dylan - Eat The Document Soundtrack

Bob Dylan –
Eat The Document Soundtrack

(soniclovenoize
reconstruction)

Side A:

1.Tell Me, Momma

2.I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never
Have Met)

3.Ballad of a Thin Man

4.Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues

Side B:

5.Mr. Tambourine Man

6.Baby, Let Me Follow You Down

7.One Too Many Mornings

8.Like a Rolling Stone

My New Year’s
Resolution is to keep this blog updated!Starting off 2017 is an album that truly never was: the theoretical soundtrack
to the unreleased documentary film Eat The Document, which chronicled Bob Dylan’s
famous 1966 World Tour, backed by what would become The Band.A behind-the-scenes look at a controversial and
confrontational moment in rock history in which Dylan “went electric” to the
great chagrin of his folk-purist audiences, the tour is filled with impassioned
and even spiteful performances, a direct response from the jeers from the audience who
thought he “sold out”.This reconstruction
compiles the soundboard recordings of the actual, full performances only
partially featured on Eat The Document, presented in (mostly) film order,
edited to sound as a continuous performance and effectively becoming a unique Bob
Dylan live album in itself.

Bob Dylan’s famed
“Electric Trilogy”—1965’s Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and
1966’s Blonde On Blonde—proved that rock music could be intellectual by combining
his often abstract poetics into a rock band context.While obviously a success on record, Dylan
slowly tested the waters for a live incarnation of his vision throughout 1965, beginning
with his performance at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25th, backed by the Buttersfield Blues Band--a performance allegedly infuriating Pete
Seeger who attempted to cut all power to the stage!Deciding he needed a formal and relatively
trustworthy backing band for the following tours, Dylan hired Canadian bar-rockers The Hawks to back
him on sporadic gigs throughout 1965. Although The Hawks—who would later re-title themselves to The Band and see their own
success—proved to be an excellent backing band in a live setting, they failed
to accommodate Dylan in the studio. Early
sessions for Highway 61 Revisited’ s follow-up
in January 1966 proved unusable to Dylan’s standard and he relocated to Nashville
to finish the album; only “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” from the
January New York sessions made the album.

Regardless,
Dylan regrouped with his road-tested crew, intending to promote his new album
Blond On Blonde with a world tour.Although
the tour went underway in February—before the album was even finished!—two new
faces slipped into Dylan’s entourage by April.The first was soundman Richard Alderson, who provided the PAs for the
European leg of the World Tour.Personally
invited to make soundboard recordings of that leg of the tour by Dylan (in
exchange for assistance in building Alderson’s dream recording studio),
Alderson ran the sound while taping almost everything on a trusty mono Nagra
recorder.He was no stranger to this,
since he had also recorded Dylan’s set at The Gaslight Café in 1962.

The second
new face was filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, who was tasked to film Dylan’s tour—onstage
and off—to make a comprehensive document of the turbulent events.Like Alderson, Pennebaker too was no stranger
to Dylan’s inner-circle, as he had recently filmed Dylan’s acoustic European
tour the previous year, eventually released as Don’t Look Back, the penultimate
statement from Dylan’s live acoustic period.Just like the previous year, Pennebaker filmed behind the scenes: early morning
hangovers in hotel rooms; backstage celebrity jam
sessions; furious audience members; an awkward limo ride with John Lennon.Pennebaker also filmed the live performances themselves,
usually on-stage with the man himself, getting extreme close-ups of a jubilant Dylan
relishing in challenging the audience, their outrage only fueling him to rock
harder.But unlike Don’t Look Back (in which
Dylan himself had little input), Dylan wanted directorial credit and final cut privilege.After a handshake deal, Pennebaker was slated
as cinematographer with the intent of Dylan and his crew editing Pennebaker’s footage
for the ABC Television series ABC Stage 67.

The tour
closed with a pair of shows at The Royal Albert Hall on May 26th and
27th, which were professionally recorded to three-track by CBS
Records for a possible live album, but it never materialized (within the proceeding
50 years, anyways).Exhausted, Dylan retired
to his new home in Woodstock, NY for a temporary break until a motorcycle crash
on July 29th gave him an excuse to retire from the live stage for an
indefinite amount of time.Meanwhile,
Pennebaker and Bob Neuwirth compiled their own edit of the footage, tentatively
called You Know Something Is Happening.This
edit was rejected by Dylan that summer, and he proceeded to create his own edit
of the tour footage with Howard Alk and Gordon Quinn assisting.Influenced by the surrealism movement, Dylan’s cut
of the film relied on no established narrative, featured no complete performances
and was assembled in no specific order.It
was titled Eat The Document, a paraphrased quip by music journalist Al Aronowitz suggesting how to approach the documentary medium itself.Of course, ABC rejected Eat The Document as
being incomprehensible to the general audience and has remained unreleased ever
since.

Uneaten documents
of the 1966 Tour eventually leaked out over time, beginning with bootleg copies
of Alderson’s acetate recordings.Reputation grew of the confrontational tour, which even led to a
legendary misappropriation of a legendary show. The Manchester Free Trade Hall show on May 17th
featured a legendary jeer—calling Dylan a “Judas”, in which Dylan responds “You’re
a liar!” and tells the band to “Play it fucking loud!”The initial bootlegger intentionally mislabeled
the show as being at the Royal Albert Hall so the records could be
stealthy pressed as the album Royal by Albert Hall.The bootleg’s fame had grown so much that an
official recording sourced from CBS’s multitracks was scheduled in the 90s, even
perpetuating its mythos by retaining the incorrect venue location as the Royal
Albert Hall!While this pristine stereo mix
of the show was scrapped by Dylan, a bootleg sourced from a leaked
Sony Records DAT tape appeared in 1995 as Guitars Kissing & The
Contemporary Fix.An official remixed rawer version that featured more of the room ambience was finally approved by
Dylan and released as The Bootleg Series Vol 4 in 1998.

Pennebaker’s
footage itself was scarcely seen aside from bootleg videos and private showings
of Eat The Document until Martin Scorsese’s 2005 biopic No Direction Home.Unlike Eat The Document, No Direction Home
featured complete performances and even featured the entire Judas/Liar
affair.Finally, the 36-CD box set The
1966 Live Recordings was released in 2016, containing all of Alderson’s
surviving soundboard tapes as well as the three shows professionally recorded
to three-track by CBS (as well as a handful of audience tapes to represent the
missing shows).Due to the sudden availability
of audio recordings paired with the No Direction Home footage, some online sleuths—notably
members of the Expecting Rain forums—were able to piece together what specific performances
were originally featured on Eat The Document, a task that was previously impossible
due to Dylan & Alk’s abstract film editing techniques.For the first time in fifty years, we are
able to piece together an actual soundtrack to this film that never was!

All recordings
on this reconstruction are taken from The 1966 Live Recordings, all being
Alderson’s fantastic mono soundboard recordings.The tracks are presented in the order as seen
in Eat The Document, with the exception being that “Mr. Tambourine Man” is
moved up to open Side B as a sort of acoustic intermission, and “Like a Rolling
Stone” is moved down to end the album and create a finale.Side A opens with the energetic Liverpool 5/14/66
performance of “Tell Me, Momma”, which was also featured on The Band’s 2005
anthology A Musical History.This is followed
by the driving Cardiff 5/11/66 take of “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We
Never Have Met)”.While the film
features a montage of three performances of “Ballad of a Thin Man” (from
Newcastle, Cardiff and Glasgow), here we will use the entire Newcastle 5/21/66 performance
in which Dylan truly accuses the audience itself to be the flabbergasted Mr.
Jones.Concluding the side is the anguished
Belfast 5/6/66 performance of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.”

Side B
begins with what we now know as the serene Newcastle performance of “Mr. Tambourine
Man”, which merges into the rollicking Liverpool “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.”Next is the dusty Belfest performance of “One
Too Many Mornings”; since the recording was incomplete, a patch is used from Sheffield
5/16/66 to create a full take of the song which luckily includes a large amount
of booing from the audience, followed by Dylan’s taunting.After an audience member requests his biggest
hit, Dylan obliges and the album concludes with the powerful Liverpool “Like a Rolling Stone”.The resulting album not only fills in the ambiguity
left from Eat The Document, but creates a hair-raising live record filled with
some of the highlights from his 1966 Tour, worthy of a theoretical release in March
1967 (a place surely taken by Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits).Although as an imaginary soundtrack to a film that was never released, it's a bit of a stretch... but when you got
nothing, you got nothing to lose.

When those box sets came out I had a very strong feeling you would be doing this. Great job. I am also very glad to read that you intend to start doing a little more here. There is a book I have - cannot remember the name at the moment - but that book was always "If I could live out one fantasy" to me. Your site all but turns that book into a reality and therefore is one of my 2 favorite sites to look at every day and see if just maybe there is something new. It is also the ONLY site where I will download anything you upload. In any case I hope this is a site that will outlive me because I would be incredibly sad if it ever disappeared or stopped existing. What you do is important and I for one appreciate it tremendously. Thank you so very much for the work that you do.

Wow! I echo what the other guys have said so far and the text and thesis alone is worthy of debate and discussion and is truly fascinating reading. That you should have fleshed it out in this way with the music to boot (sic!) is a real treat. Thanks! Great start to the new year

Excellent! Just discovered this blog a few days ago, but I've grabbed everything, and am looking forward to future posts.

Speaking of, here are some ideas:

* Prince - Glam Slam UlyssesOkay, it's a bit doubtful that he intended this song sequence to be a proper ALBUM, but it's still interesting to think about what it could have been. Especially considering the earlier version of the song "Come" and the repeat of "Strays of the World" in the song list. Besides, it was all seemingly composed as an impressionistic pop ballet, so... why not?

* The Beatles - A Doll's HousePeople tend to talk about paring down the White Album into a single disc. I think that's folly, the album is perfect as it is (the odd touches add to its kaleidoscopic charm, and even "Revolution 9" is a solid example of its very non-commercial genre). Instead, let's see what the original TRIPLE album would have been! Some classics were composed in that era but held back ("Something" "The Long and Winding Road") as well as some great, but not _classic_ songs ("Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam") others were mastered but dropped entirely ("What's the New Mary Jane" "Not Guilty"), and some were held back for solo work ("Junk" "Child of Nature" "Circles" an alternate arrangement of the aforementioned "Not Guilty")... Maybe you could save yourself some trouble and just assemble the 'missing' LP, since I suspect the canon two would've been the same.

* Queen - Flash Gordon [music only]Queen composed some interesting stuff for the cult classic "Flash Gordon," but the official soundtrack was marred by having literally all of the sound effects and dialogue from the sequences in the film over top of the music. I'd love to be able to listen just to the tunes themselves. Leaving bits of dialogue or effects that work rhythmically (like Dale's "Go Flash, go!" in "Football Fight"), could be cool as well.

* Queen - Highlander SoundtrackWe got "A Kind of Magic" out of the deal, which is probably much better than this would have been, but it would be neat to see the collection that Brian May has teased us with. Including the alternate mixes from the film itself, as well as the unreleased snippet of "New York New York" would make for a novel experience, at least.

* David Bowie - ToyOkay, so this has been done by others, but I'm interested to see what your take on this unreleased Bowie album would turn out like. I would've suggested "2.Afrikaans" instead (the planned sequel to "1.Outside"), but I don't know if enough of the recorded material is available to even attempt it.

* ELO - Secret Messages [2LP]Most of the material is available, but bringing the leaked "Beatles Forever" up to the level of Jeff Lynne's production style of the time would definitely be a project in itself.

* Prince - Second ComingA live album that could have been released around the "Dirty Mind" and "Controversy" era, this is the other of Prince's MANY unreleased albums that I would most love to dive into.

* Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Soundtrack, vol. 3Including the unreleased songs recorded for 'Sex Bob-Omb' and 'Crash and the Boys' as well as many of the other tunes used in the movie, Edgar Wright and Nigel Godrich teased us with the possibility, if the OST and score (what I'm considering vol. 1 & 2 respectively) did well enough.

Interesting comments on A doll's House, however I'm a proponent of the George Martin single lp theory. Too much just plain filler on there. However, if one were to pad it out, the outfake of "Sour milk Sea " would be a much better inclusion than crap like Mary Jane.jmho.

For the record, I am of the "It's The White Album! Shut Up!" group. I think it's perfect the way it is, and there's really no way to properly make it a single album without losing it's character (and a truck-load of great songs). That is one oft-requested reconstruction you will probably never see on my blog, sorry. But with that said, I have been pondering a scenario for some time that, while I don't have any intentions of reconstructing and uploading here, I thought I'd bring up as food for thought...

What if The White album was two separate albums instead of one double-LP? What is interesting is that there was definitely a middle-point to the White Album sessions, as several key changes were made all within a weeks of eachother:1) Ringo quit and came back after The Beatles tracked two songs without him [August 22-Sept 5]2) The Beatles switched from recording on 4-track to 8-track [August 28-30 at Trident, then Sept 3 and onward at EMI]3) George Martin ceased being an active producer, going on holiday and leaving Chris Thomas to produce the rest of the album until his return in October [starting Sept 9, although the Sept 3, 5 & 6 sessions had no producer credit, suggesting George had checked out early]

Furthermore, the "Hey Jude"/"Revolution" single was released on August 30th. Using this end-of-August middle-point, WHAT IF, instead of that single, The Beatles had released an album of the best of what they had done thus far (with Ringo and George Martin's departure signaling the start of the sessions for the second album)?

Then the contenders for this theoretical second album (THE BEATLES - released around Christmas 1968, produced by Chris Thomas) would be:Dear Prudence, Glass Onion, Happiness is a Warm Gun, Bungalow Bill, Julia, Back in the USSR, Helter Skelter, I Will, Birthday, Honey Pie, Martha My Dear, Why Don't We Do It In The Road, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Piggies, Savoy Truffle and Long Long Long.

Live the site welcome back!! Am I the only one having issues trying to download material? Zippyshare seems really spammy and keeps trying to install software and extensions before it will let me download anything.

An album that never was of a film that (almost) never was. Brilliant! (I think the film was only ever screened in the early seventies, at New York's Academy of Music and the Whitney Museum of American Art). Thanks for this wonderful glimpse of a parallel universe.

An album that never was of a film that (almost) never was. Brilliant! (I think the film was only ever screened in the early seventies, at New York's Academy of Music and the Whitney Museum of American Art). Thanks for this wonderful glimpse of a parallel universe.

Great one Sonic, terrific job as usual. Glad to hear you'll be more active on the blog this year, I'd still love to hear some Hip Hop albums that never were!I just finished reassembling the original test pressing of Paul McCartney's "McCartney II" using the unlimited hi-res files from the box set, easy project but turned out great. Let me know if you want it, it sounds excellent and I'd be glad to share it.

I would also love to hear some "never were" hip hop albums. As a big Eminem fan, I would interested in the rumored King Mathers album from Eminem that he recorded some songs for in the 2005-2007 timeframe. Some songs ended up on Relapse, but originally were recorded for this rumored album. Some songs that could be used are Careful What You Wish For, Difficult, Syllables, My Darling, No Apologies, Jimmy Crack Corn, Public Enemy #1, Beautiful, Emulate, Ballin' Uncontrollably, Wee Wee, G.O.A.T., The Apple, It's Been Real, and 50 Ways. I think it would be interesting to compile!

I've actually recently attempted to reconstruct the (tentatively titled) "King Mathers" album myself. Unfortunately, almost every song is only available in mp3 format because many of them leaked and were never officially released.

It's a pretty hard album to reconstruct, given that its material is so eclectic. Had it been released, it would have definitely been considered his weakest album (though there are some strong songs on it, this was his weak period), and it'd have been a shame because he might have retired after his album (judging by the tone of the songs).

"Jimmy Crack Corn" and "Public Enemy #1" were recorded for the "Re-Up" album, and "Wee Wee" was apparently the first track Eminem recorded after rehab. Here's what I've compiled of the tracks we know were definitely from this era and likely would have comprised the album.

Definitely agree it would have been his weakest album. The most essential songs ended up on Relapse or on the Refill, which is good. Thanks for sharing this, I have heard some of the leaked songs on youtube, but I will have to try to listen to it in this order.

As usual, it's always a delight to receive your newest project and the fact that you are filling in gaps in my collection with what I consider essential non-released releases is all the more sweeter ... your hard work is appreciated by many !

Thanks for the Dylan and your efforts...re: the recent comment on White Album, some suggestions, not in this order:Revolution(electric)Not GuiltyHey JudeChild Of NatureGoodbyeCirclesJunk/singalong junkStep Inside Love/Los ParanoiasWhat's the New MaryjaneRevolution 1(Take 20)

George had enough songs at the time for a whole album of his own. along with the 4 on the White Album he also had the following songs written.

Art Of Dying [On All Things Must Pass]I'd Have You Anytime [On All Things Must Pass]Circles [On Gone Troppo]Isn't It A Pity [On All Things Must Pass]Sour Milk Sea [George gave this one to Jackie Lomax - Features Paul, Ringo, George and Eric Clapton, produced by Goerge]Nowhere To Go [Still unreleased, demoed on All Things Must Pass]Not Guilty [Recorded (100+ takes!) but not used]

As someone who's been interested in alternate sequencing for just about a decade now, it was a real treat stumbling across this site. Thanks so much for sharing your concepts, and I look forward to what you'll prepare in 2017. It certainly livens up my walks.

Recently I decided to combine the early-80s Steely Dan/Donald Fagan material into what I consider a worthy successor to Aja, New Frontier. Side A is Bliss, filling the listener with good feelings and the desire to live in the moment. Side B is Caution, showing the possible consequences of listening to Side A. The young people look to the future while the old people look back to the past. Also these songs may or may not be topics brought up during Lester the Nightfly's radio show on WJAZ.

As for the cover, it would be The Nightfly with the text changed to "Steely Dan - New Frontier."

If you're a Rolling Stones fan, the late beloved Sister Morphine bootleg label did a one-off re-sequencing of Tattoo You that gave the album a flowing dynamic that it desperately needed, since the band just threw the rockers on one side and the ballads on the other and called it a day.

Sister Morphine's "Tattoo'd" sequence:

Start Me UpLittle T&ANo Use In CryingTops NeighborsSlaveHeavenHang FireWorried About YouBlack LimousineWaiting On A Friend

Great work! How about a Wailers project? Anything from the early 70s would be a treat or a hypothetical album if the original Wailers hadn't gone their separate ways in 1974. The combined talents of Marley, Tosh and Livingston created some of my favorite songs in popular music history.

Hoping npt tp be late to the discussipn but I did create a 3LP White album myself, using the core album tunes (replacing some with alternative versions), session outtakes, demos, songs they had in the can but didn't record (yes, I know it's cheating, but still...), as well as Across the Universe, a pre-India song, that because it hadn't been used in either Yellow Submarine or released on the Lady Madonna single, it was good to use. I cheated in using McCartney and Lennon solo tunes, but since they were already written, and the WA is a huge mix of styles, it fits pretty well. I put the new songs on a separate disc, making sides one and two Disc One, the new stuff Disc Two and sides three and four into disc three. There it is:

There it is, six sides, 45 songs, the first triple album in the history of everything (take that, the Clash!). I renamed it A Doll's House, for the sake of change, and because I like the artwork best. Thoughts?

Great job! I am such a fan of the White album that I listen to Three versions that I created on my own: a single album of the electric stuff (psych doowop!)an alternate double album and a similar-to-yours triple album. I agree with both arguments -too much and just right! BTW, can david or anyone provide a link to where I can get the mash-up of "Sour Milk Sea" that david mentions above? Thanks and thanks to this blogspot for being so awesome!

As George Harrison once put it " It's All Too Much ". Personally I think double albums tend to be a bit much, and triples are way too much. There's so much material, that it looses it's impact. I think George Martin was right about the single lp for the "Doll's House " album. At best, I think there's maybe 3 sides of good stuff, and that's including "Not Guilty ", which never should have been left off. But that's only my opinion, others probably like the stuff I consider crap. It's all subjective.....

I slightly updated my tracklist, so there are some changes here and there. Got rid of "Circles", since it is reeeeeeally boring, and tacked it as a non-album b-side, and mostly exchanged places and versions

Big fan of Albums That Never Were and thrilled that you are planning more work on it this year.

Here's a few suggestions:Given the buzz around the new U2 Joshua Tree, the double album version that the band initially considered before settling on the successful single album version.

The Songs of Ascent album that U2 announced, worked on and allegedly completed before finally abandoning it over the course of 5 and a half years in favour of Songs of Innocence,

The Achtung Baby album that we would have had if the original U2 Berlin session tapes weren't stolen (and bootlegged).

The ELO Secret Messages album that was originally planned to be a double album, but was thwarted by CBS Records claiming that producing a double vinyl album would be too expensive, and as a result, Jeff Lynne reduced it to a single album.

The album Jethro Tull started and abandoned in favour of Passion Play. Or even the Passion Play follow-up War Child that was originally meant to accompany a film project and was planned as a double-album set before appearing as a single album.

Thanks so much for this compilation. The story about Pete Seeger didn't happen. He did say if he had an axe he'd have cut the sound system cables. There were probably people booing who didn't like the music, but there were also people who found the sound too distorted. It wouldn't be surprising to overdrive a PA setup used for acoustic music.

been dreaming and waiting for the unseen EAT THE DOC footage for decades, and the film that I imagine could NOT NOT have been shot of Tour '74....this is exciting...I wonder where my boot heels will be leading me!!!~E

Should have said this earlier, but I adore this and, despite having all the 66 tour material, this is the album I've played so many scores of times when I've wanted Dylan 66, which over the last 12 months has been something I wanted a lot. My favourite of the many great pieces that you've put together. Wonderful stuff